It’s so easy to see our enemies as — well, enemies. What does it take to re-see them as human? Late in life, Erika Jacoby and Ursula Martens took an incredible journey. Not the sort of journey that takes you by jet halfway around the world. No, the sort of
Source here I get why social justice-oriented college students are furious with Israel. (I am, too.) I get why they are protesting to support Palestinians’ right to an independent homeland. (I support that, too, though the boundaries are up for negotiation.) While I find it a deeply offensive, emotion-based tactic,
That the deaths of civilians killed by the IDF targeting Hamas leaders, command centers, and weapons caches are tragedies. That the continuing occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights by Israeli settlers is unethical, illegal, and outrageous. Once we agree on these disturbing points, it is equally critical
The notion of a “theory” comes from science. As such, the term conveys all the legitimacy upon which the scientific method relies. It should not be tossed around casually like a frisbee in the park. The so-called “Great Replacement Theory” we are now reading about in mainstream publications is not
The last time I heard anyone utter the name, Przemysl, I must have been ten or eleven years old. In his thickly Yiddishized English, my maternal grandfather must have been telling me something about his early life. And I must have been listening more intently than I realized. I don’t
Despite being a lifelong non-coffee-drinker, I somehow found myself reading two fantastic books about coffee recently. The first, Miriam Sagan’s A Hundred Cups of Coffee, hijacked me from reading the OTHER coffee book I’d just started. Sagan’s series of short meditations inspired by drinking a cup of coffee (and, occasionally,
Photo by Noam Galai Women (and some men) with signs, as far as the eye could see. In my first post about the Women’s March of January 21, 2017, I chronicled the social and emotional ties I saw created in this space of massive communitas, feminist style. Here, I
Symbolic anthropologists, take note. What’s in a symbol? Everything, when it comes to politics. Especially, election-year politics. And especially when a major political candidate claims ignorance of centuries-old symbolism used to discriminate against an oppressed minority. Was Trump being anti-Semitic, or was he being stupid, when he Tweeted an accusation
A shorter version of this post has just appeared online as a podcast, in coordination with the motion put to a vote among the membership of the American Anthropological Association to boycott Israeli academic institutions. Here’s the text . . . The first thing I want to say is that
I get the logic of economic boycotts for political reasons. In high school, I stopped buying grapes to support Cesar Chavez’ protest of the slave-like working conditions of Mexican farm workers in grape vineyards. I also stopped buying Saran Wrap, to protest Dow Chemical’s manufacture of napalm for killing civilians in Vietnam. When